Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 66.23
Liaison Jody Jones
Submission Date March 18, 2024

STARS v2.2

Mount Royal University
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 2.00 / 2.00 Jorden Dye
Program Admin
IES
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution have an ongoing program that offers incentives for academic staff in multiple disciplines or departments to develop new sustainability courses and/or incorporate sustainability into existing courses? :
Yes

A brief description of the incentive program(s):
The Institute for Environmental Sustainability MRU provides research funding on a competitive basis to MRU researchers pursuing projects with an environmental sustainability focus. The funding supports projects on environmental sustainability related topics pursued by faculty in order to help them expand their horizons in their subject of interest which they can incorporate in the classes they teach at MRU.

Course release is also an incentive offered at MRU. One of the success stories from the above incentives is on the creation of the professional development course - Strategic Sustainability and the Energy Industry developed by a faculty member as well the Director of Institute of Environmental Sustainability. The Institute launched this course as a four week online course through the University's Faculty of Continuing Education. The course arose from the extensive research into the availability of existing professional development in sustainability, and endeavoured to meet the needs of sustainability professionals in Calgary and Canada more broadly. The course aimed to engage students around some of today's most pressing issues facing businesses, societies and environments via a cutting- edge online platform. Furthermore, students were to gain a high-level understanding of sustainability and its tensions whilst being provided with competencies required to pursue sustainability in practice.
https://www.mtroyal.ca/cs/groups/public/documents/pdf/iesannualreport2016.pdf

A brief description of the incentives that academic staff who participate in the program(s) receive:
MRU offers incentives such as course release, professional development funding, and trainings for faculty in multiple disciplines and departments to develop courses. The course release time allows faculty to take time off teaching their course loads to develop and work on their projects or courses.
Supplementary, professional funding opportunities and trainings are also offered under the The Office of Research, Scholarship and Community Engagement. Incentives offered under this office include research aiding resources, trainings, supportive development and much more.
https://www.mtroyal.ca/Research/index.htm
https://www.mtroyal.ca/Research/ConductYourResearch/index.htm
https://www.mtroyal.ca/Research/ConductYourResearch/SSDATA_ORSCE_FUNDOPPS
https://www.mtroyal.ca/Research/ResourcesandTraining/index.htm

Website URL where information about the incentives for developing sustainability course content is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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